Handling your Payroll the RIFT Way

For growing businesses

Are you running an SME with at least 3 staff on payroll? If you’ve got employees then you have responsibilities. Obviously, you’ll know about National Minimum Wage, but employment law goes a lot further than that.

On a simple, nuts-and-bolts level, you can’t just stuff a wad of notes in your employees’ hands every week or month. You need to provide accurate and regular pay slips, get set up for Pay As You Earn (PAYE) to tax their income and keep detailed records. On top of all that, you’ve got pensions, statutory leave and a range of other things to consider. It’s a lot of work, and there’s a lot that can go wrong with it if you’re not careful. Here’s a basic run-down to get you started:

PAYE

As an employer, it’s your responsibility to deduct Income Tax and National Insurance Contributions (NICs) from your employees’ salaries. You do this every time you pay them, and send the money to HMRC. You’ll need to understand what your employees’ tax codes mean, and what paperwork the taxman’s going to expect from you. If you get your sums wrong and deduct too little tax, you can expect HMRC hassles for both you and your employees. This could even mean prosecution and a criminal record.

Benefits

If you’re providing any other benefits to your employees, like company cars or private medical insurance, HMRC’s going to want to hear about them too. You’ve got to send all this information electronically, meaning you’ll need specialised payroll software to get the details where they need to be.

Statutory Rights

When you’re registered as an employer, you’ve got to do more than just pay people and keep a few notes. UK Employees are entitled to a range of rights and benefits, such as:

Up to 28 weeks of Statutory Sick Pay.

5.6 weeks of paid annual leave.

Statutory Maternity, Paternity or Shared Parental Pay.

You can find out more about these kinds of rights on our Statutory Leave page.

Pensions

Employers now have to set up a “workplace pension” for any of their staff who qualify. In general, that means employees who:

Are over 22 years old (and under the State Pension age).

Earn £10,000 a year or more.

Work within the UK, or are based here (even if they travel abroad for work).

Pensions are an important issue for employers. You can find out more on our pensions page

The RIFT payroll service is custom-built to take care of all your payroll hassles. If you’re just setting up, we’ll get you registered as an employer with HMRC. We’ll make sure all your PAYE, NIC and other responsibilities are taken care of and help you keep HMRC up to date with important changes in your business. We’ll even set up and manage an entire payroll system for you to:

Calculate the Income Tax, National Insurance Contributions and other payments of each member of PAYE staff, so you can pay HMRC the correct amounts each month.

Calculate the Employers’ National Insurance contributions so you never miss a deadline.

Make RTI (Real Time Information) compliant submissions to HMRC for every payment you make to an employee.

Compile and send the final payroll report and expenses and benefits report to HMRC each year.

Calculate the P60s of all your employees each year.

Of course, with RIFT Accounting you get a whole lot more. You’ll also get to pick our considerable brains for unlimited support and advice, all year round. We’ll handle all your tax-related documents, workplace pension obligations and customised payslips.

Call on 01233 653006 or email payroll@riftaccounting.com to kick things off – or fill in the Contact Us form for a call back from us. We’ll talk you through the services we offer, and show you how we can build a package to fit your needs. Whatever business you’re in, you’re better off with RIFT.